Hey Drew,
Not so sure i grok the whole of the victim/villain mentality. The comment regarding doing "for" or doing "to" seems to have stemmed from two perspectives. (at least, LOL) One point of view comes from a sort of observation like process where I am watching one person and their relationship with another, where the roll I play is one of third person observer, neither the victim nor the villain but observer of the interaction and within process neither being victimized nor vilified. The second perspective is one of a more personally involved first person nature, where I have questioned my own motivation regarding whether it is ever really possible to be certain of doing "for" someone else as the result has at times felt more like having done something to another, despite the effort. Seeing myself as having played the part of villain and having played the part of being victim. My question stems from the point of the slippery slope where "victim" is villain and "villain" is victim and the question of which is actually which.
A third sort of conception between the notion of doing for and doing to has evolved from within the notion similar to the CWG quote regarding a society inevitably creates that which it fears most. It all gets rather abstract. One issue I've struggled with is the collective societal notions and our treatment of what it calls "criminal" behavior. The rather abstract idea that the "villain" is actually a "victim" of society. In this way society has done something "to" the individual that has affected the individuals capacity to exercise some different choice. Choice; in this example, only being capable if it is a selection between options within awareness. In some sort of way the capacity to exercise choice is removed because of the perception of no other option available. In order to exercise choice an awareness of a set of options to choose from must be present.
I realize the sensitivity of the subject but it seems to relate in some way to the act of suicide. It is not really a choice if one is incapable of perceiving any other alternative. I feel, in some way, this is something society has done "to" an individual. I have been close to such a choice but within those final moments an alternative has so far somehow popped into awareness. It saddens me so when the time has come that an individual is "pushed" so far, from within and from without, that they have lost the capacity of awareness of an alternative. The choice, abstractly being taken from them, not by an others individuals direct will, but through the collective will of the society that individual is a member of. There seems little capacity to exercise choice when the mind so wishes out that it becomes incapable of seeing any other alternative. If I have done this, or participated unconsciously in some way in it's doing, I am deeply saddened.
This also relates in ways to the thinking of serving justice in our criminal system. We believe it is an act of choice, but again if there appears only one option it can't be called much of a choice. I sort of get a feeling that society creates the "criminal" out of its fears of becoming victimized. I view this sort of criminalization as as a mental heath issue rather then one of a pathological criminal issue or tied into notions of punishment for having made a criminal choice. Crime being more like a social disease, that could be treated, then a behavior that requires a punitive retribution toward serving some notion of justice. Love can be some powerful medicine.
And it does all feel related to the notion of victim and villain but in an abstract way I am unsure of which is which. So within the notion of serving "justice" which seems to take the form of doing something "for" the victim the consequence is something must be done "to" the villain, all the while the "villain" is the "victim" of creation from what that society feared most.
If it would be true, that a society inevitable creates that which it fears most, this seems an awful lot like something being done to an individual. The problem though is the indirect nature of how this doing "to" gets done. The doing to and doing for not so easily separated into the notion of the more direct relationship between our notions of individual victim and and individual villain. There are collectives involved within the interplay where there is much less direct a connection between one person as a victim, an act of choice, and the villain.
The notion of perpetration or perpetrator (the Perp, in current criminal vernacular) being created out of what the societal construct fears most. To exercise a "different" choice seems to require the awareness of an alternative. I submit the notion that social pathology is disease not crime.
Have we as a society failed to nurture the provision of the appearance of an alternative choice? If we have, collectively as society, and I do feel that is a possibility, then it takes the form and guise of something we have collectively done "to" an individual member of our society, all the while we swear up and down our motivation lay in the doing "for" the members of society. The whole idea of doing "for" or doing "to" getting all rather muddled up within the notions of our expectations.
I guess it is your choice to see my statement/question regarding the notion of the expectation of doing for or doing to, and how it may or may not relate to the victim/villain paradigm of thinking and the idea of fear.
There is a notion at play and it resides somewhere between the construct of I and that which is not I as a societal construct. That which is not I certainly seems to have the capacity to "do to" or "do for" me, in equal proportion to the degree that I am capable of "doing for" or "doing to" the construct that is not I. There is a door to perception that appears to swing both ways.
If I felt actually capable of Blessing you I would, all the while I flail about in the effort, regardless of the perception of its capacity.
I don't know, but that doesn't seem to preclude a capacity to guess. Likely it is more an and then an either or.
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